


poison & wine

by tilthesundies



Category: Dunkirk (2017), One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:51:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13475022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tilthesundies/pseuds/tilthesundies
Summary: Alex comes home from the war to find a stranger living in his flat.





	poison & wine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GMTYUniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMTYUniverse/gifts).



> hiiii, i hope you like this???? this was written on very short notice, but i did my best and if i'd had more time it would've definitely exceeded 40k :) i lost my writing voice for most of 2017 and writing this really helped me find it again for the most part. hope you enjoyyyy. it's also unedited so apologies for any mishaps.

The first thing Alex almost does when he sets a wobbly foot on ground from stepping off that train is nearly fall to his knees to kiss the dirty, solid ground.

The skin of his face is stained and dirtied with splotches of oil he was drowning in during the dusk and well into the midnight black of the night, the only source of light that could let him see the panicked, torn and apathetic faces of other soldiers and guards who had come with small rafts for the hundreds of them and the water enclosing every inch he went were the small lanterns attached to the front of those rafts.

His hair is a right fucking mess — black oil causing strands to be stiff and thick; hardly movable.

He doesn’t look at the women, the men, the _children_ , that cry and sob with relief and gratitude and happiness at the men returning home to them for good as he walks away from the scene. It’s all unwanted noise to his ears, and just another thing he doesn’t want to see.

The walk home is longer than he had anticipated.

His right ankle is sore, and it hurts the longer he puts pressure on it. He stops for a few minutes each time it becomes too much; and he pauses often to look around because he struggles to remember where which roads lead where before continuing on. He gets looks down the streets, but he isn’t sure whether their eyes are strange or appraising or wary — perhaps they’re all three — in which case Alex doesn’t care. He’s tired; he’s hungry; and he’s in desperate need of a bath.

The hall of his flat level is quiet and dimly lit.

Sucking in a breath through his parted lips, he tries the knob only to find it’s locked. He pauses as his eyes find a small plant right at his doorstep, the stem a green and pink ruffled petals thriving with healthy life in a yellow metal pot. It harbours a friendly, inviting atmosphere against the dull, muted colours of the walls that he’d been sure would’ve died.

He never asked any neighbour of his to look after it. He trails his gaze upwards to the knob, lingering, before slowly crouching down to look underneath the flowers and finding his key still there. It looks as it ever did; only dirtier.

He turns the lever lock key in the padlock with tightly wound knots closing his upper abdomen in and climbing up to the back of his throat by usage of his lungs; and it increases minutely as he pushes opens the door with a shaky, oily hand. Pausing, he listens to the big band music coming from the far end of the flat and smells eggs and sausage wafting through the sudden air that bombards his face and senses from the crack of the door. He pushes it further open after brief hesitation, and he stops right in the middle of the arch at the sight of a young man at the stove dressed in white pyjama shorts striped blue and a plain, white t-shirt. Nothing on his feet. His hair is short and a soft brown, and he looks as relaxed as could probably be, slouching as he moves food around in a cooking pan.

“Who are you?” It slips out of Alex’s mouth before he can think. His voice is a little rough around the edges, making it harsher than he intended.

The stranger looks up with ease. He’s entirely unperturbed as he studies Alex, looking him up and down then settling it on his face, meeting his eyes.

“I could ask you the same,” he replies, voice raspy and soft.

Alex closes the door and steps further in the flat, and stops just right outside the kitchen area, and the stranger only arches his eyebrows.

“I asked who the hell you are.”

The man just stares at Alex in silence for many moments. “Louis,” he finally answers. “The name’s Louis. Don’t wear it out.”

Turning his back to Alex, he turns the burner off and stretches on the tips of his toes to gather two plates from a cabinet above. He shovels a split portion of eggs onto both plates and puts an extra sausage on one of them. Placing the dirty spatula back into the pan, Louis then lifts a plate into each hand and turns to Alex, outstretching the one with the extra sausage to him, but Alex doesn’t take it.

Instead, he asks, “Why are you here in my flat?”

“I was told nobody lived here, so, I took it upon myself when I saw an opening,” he replies. Like it’s simple and _right_. It’s not fucking right. After an unresponsive pause from Alex, he quietly adds, “Appears I’d been lied to, though.”

His voice is a little hard when he speaks. “Yeah. Seems so.”

Louis, however, is unaffected; he brings the plate being offered to Alex up a couple of inches, wiggling it slightly in his face with an expectant look on his face, eyebrows raised again.

“C’mon,” he urges, “don’t want your food to go cold, do you? It’s no good to waste perfectly edible breakfast. I’m sure you must be starving, soldier.”

He is — and it was made worse by how _fresh_ and colourful the food Louis is presenting to him is. Army food is shit. He feels like it can’t even be qualified _as_ actual food, to be completely honest; it was a bunch of different coloured goops and, of course, the few various vegetables. Mainly green beans. He liked those best, even though he isn’t the fondest of them. They were the only thing closest to being _actual_ food.

Alex takes the plate from Louis with caution, not breaking eye contact.

Louis smiles, soft skin bunching up around his blue eyes and natural pigmented pink lips easing sweetness into his face, and this time Alex can’t look away for reasons that aren’t his previous.

“Come sit,” he urges Alex in a gentler tone, and walks around him.

The kitchen table is tiny and made of wood; it sits two people at best, pressed up against the wall, under a short but wide window with dark blue curtains and white lines decorating the ends pulled apart. He didn’t have those prior to leaving, but he likes them. Louis pulls out the skinny, wood chair with a narrow back sticking out of the cramped side of the table and sits down, purposely leaving the end chair with lots more space for Alex. He briefly thinks of telling Louis to take that spot, but he doesn’t find the words, so, he sits in silence.

Louis reads the newspaper as they eat, eyes skimming the front as he chews on his eggs quietly. Alex barely touches his food at first, unsure of how to act, and eyes stuck on Louis, glancing down at the paper himself a few times. The headline screams at him, and makes him feel too obvious, what with his dirty, smelly uniform still hanging on his back.

**_TENS OF THOUSANDS SAFELY HOME ALREADY_ **

It’s accompanied by font just few sizes smaller all over the paper:

 **_Many more coming by day and night;_** ** _SHIPS OF ALL SIZES DARE THE GERMAN GUNS_  ; ** ** _Tired, dirty, hungry they came back—unbeatable_**.

Louis barely blinks an odd eye, turns the pages right until he finds an unfinished crossword puzzle and begins penciling in letters like it’s another, normal day.

Alex doesn’t understand how he’s been calm all this time. If it had been himself, he would’ve felt scared — would’ve startled at the door opening out of the blue and coming face to face with a stranger who didn’t look like they quite belonged in this tiny, homely flat; fear at the unpredictability of a stranger whom he had never met nor knew anything about. He wouldn’t feel the ease that Louis displays; the air of someone who knows nothing bad will happen.

Alex wouldn’t do anything. He’s not that type of person. So, technically, Louis doesn’t have anything to be afraid of. But what if it was someone who _wasn’t_ like Alex?

“What is a seven letter word for ‘a southern state, chiefly rural, but with large industrial and power developments’?”

Alex’s eyes cut from a spot he’d been staring mindlessly at to Louis, who’s looking right at him with a passive expression. Alex blinks. “Don’t know,” he says leisurely, “not very good with the States.”

A twinkle of something erupts from its covers in Louis’s eyes, a small smile on his lips. “It’s Alabama. I was testing you.”

A very quiet puff of air passes through Alex’s mouth. It could almost — _almost_ — be perceived as a chuckle; but not quite. It lacks lip movement and any soft variety of passion he’s too tired to muster up.

He stands and makes his way to the faucet when he’s cleaned his plate. He gives it a quick rinse before setting it in the sink to wash for later, and then turns around to look at Louis. He’s a slow eater; there’s still half a sausage left that must be near, or is, room temperature by now, given how long they’ve sat there in companionable silence. Alex himself isn’t normally a slow eater, but it was difficult for him to digest what he had, despite the emptiness that filled his stomach and throat.

“I’m gonna—” He jerks his thumb in the direction of the bathroom when Louis looks over at him. “Clean myself up.”

“Do you want me to wash your uniform for you?”

Alex blinks. Shakes his head. “No — no. Thank you,” he tacks on carefully.

Louis watches him as he leaves the area, and he closes the door behind himself when he makes it in. The bathroom is the only space in this godforsaken flat that is separated from the rest; the kitchen, living area, and bedroom are all one. He presses his hands to his forehead and temples, rubbing his face, and he takes them away with a sharp inhale. Turning his head to the left, he looks at himself in the small mirror above the faucet and wishes he hadn’t. He looks far worse than he could’ve imagined; and he can’t fathom how Louis sat there enduring how he looked and _smelled_.

He pushes himself forward to turn the handles on the bathtub and let it fill. He scrubs his hands for a long time in the sink — rinsing and lathering several times before just giving up and hoping the little that’s left will wash out in the tub.

He strips himself of his uniform that feels far too heavy on his body. It’s soaked up with oil, dried water, the sand of the beach he sat on waiting for days. It’s heavy with the memories of the lifevest that had been tied around him when he abandoned ship and swam in oil through the night, and the hands of lives lost and ones he can’t remember. It’s overwhelmed with every second he endured trying to survive the most.

Alex spends a long time in the tub.

Two hours, at most.

Scrubbing, rinsing, examining the scratches and cuts all over his body that he hadn’t felt. For half an hour, he finds himself just sitting there, knees pulled to his chest and arms wrapped loosely around his ankles, staring at nothing in particular as the water becomes colder against his skin. He mindlessly listens to the jarring silence wrapped around the room, and the occasional, soft and distant noise on the other side of the door with nothing in his head.

Eventually, he finishes cleaning and gets out. He thankfully finds something to wear — pyjamas — but they aren’t his; the red shorts fit, though loose, but the shirt is definitely snug against his upper body.

He’ll have to ask where the clothes he’d left are at.

He finds Louis at the stove. A red kettle’s on the burner, steam blowing gently out of it. Louis turns around almost immediately, looking at Alex.

“Want some rosie?”

Alex nods, once. “Sure.”

They stand there in silence, Alex watching Louis, Louis fixating on the kettle and gathering their tea in matching beryl green tea cups. He hands Alex's his and takes a sip of his own, but Alex just keeps his hands wrapped around the cup to let the heat burn into his skin, because he can’t seem to get warm enough.

“Are you feeling better?” Louis asks into the lull.

Alex nods slowly. Then he blurts, “Why are you in my flat?”

Louis arches a brow as he swallows a sip. “I thought we went over this.”

“Yes, but — look, I don’t meant to be rude. You’ve been nothing but nice to me since I walked in that door, which I appreciate, but I don’t _know_ you. All I know is you moved into my flat while I was away because someone lied to you about me not living here anymore. I don’t —” He stops himself. He has all these questions, but he can’t seem to string them into proper sentences. Mainly because he doesn’t know what to fucking do.

The sane would have kicked Louis out as soon they came in, but Alex has been feeling less and less whole since he had gotten on the train to come home.

Louis exhales and lowers his cup from his face. His shoulders relax in on himself, resigned.

“It was in late September,” he begins explaining, “26th, to be exact. I needed some place to stay. I was asking around, and I guess someone eventually took pity on me and told me this one was up for me to use. I think it was a neighbour of yours — I don’t know. Maybe the landlord? It was two different people; one an older, balding bloke, and a woman in her midlife. They both told me it was fine, so, I went with it. I had no choice. Of course, I didn’t think you abandoned this place at first. Everything that indicates a life residing here was . . . here. Clothes, chairs, a bed, kitchen utensils, flannels — every necessity. And it made me question if they had told me the truth, but as someone who’s been living with nothing for longer than I care to admit to someone, I took the chance and stayed anyway. The worst that could happen was getting kicked out. And, now . . . here you are.”

Alex blinks. “So, you’ve been living here . . . exactly eight months, to the day,” he murmurs.

Nodding, Louis sips his drink. “Right.”

“So, what have you been doing this entire time?”

“Well . . . ,” he starts, “I’ve been doing what any average person does. I clean, do laundry, go to work, eat — I mostly tidy up, to be honest. I like keeping things clean. Makes up for my shite cooking skills.”

Alex is sure he should probably smile at the lighthearted remark, but he doesn’t. “I think you cook just fine,” he says.

Louis smiles. “Thank you.”

Alex should be upset at the people who lied about his absence. He’s aware he was off at war for a long _but_ indefinite time, and there’s never any guarantee in predicting when someone will return, or if. But he was gone for barely a few weeks before someone decided to offer up his space to a random. There are so many dangerous and careless and thoughtless consequences to that, and all of his things could’ve been stolen or damaged. It was hard enough collecting everything he owns; the thought of trying to recover all of it would take just as long, if not longer.

He should be upset, but he can’t find it within himself to conjure up any emotional draining reactions. He lacks the strength and will to pull it out of himself; and the mere thought of it has him wanting to lie down in bed. Preferably with sheets over his head.

He asks the first thing on his mind, eyebrows furrowed. “Where are all my things? And where do you work?”

Inclining his head, Louis pushes himself off the stove and past Alex into where his bed is as he speaks. “Everything is where I’d found it, which I assume is where you last left it all. But”—he sets his cup down on the mantle of the small fireplace and climbs onto the bed to get to the white wooden doors above matching drawers, pulling them open to reveal shirts and various articles of pants hanging from a thin rod—“I did separate our clothes so that none of it would get mixed up. The left side is yours, and the right side is mine.”

Alex peers inside the cramped place. It’s exactly as he says it is.

Louis climbs down and picks his tea back up, and in a softer voice, he adds, “You can check everywhere, if you want, but I haven’t moved or touched a thing. I have bought and added some decor, though, but that’s it. I just thought maybe if or when you returned . . .”

Alex swallows. “Oh.”

“I work at Susie’s Candy Shoppe,” Louis continues. “It’s the one down the street, on the corner. Which I have to get ready for, because my shift starts in just under half an hour.”

He turns away from Alex, closing the right door of the wardrobe to snatch the uniform hanging from the small silver knob he hadn’t taken a close look at before. It’s just an average uniform he’s seen all males working at a candy shop wear: white sleeve collared shirt with an apron that matched the ladies’ candy striper pinafore uniform. He removes it from the hanger and folds it neatly in half against his body to avoid wrinkles.

Alex almost blindly follows him when he moves him to gather his things, but his heavy feet cement him where he is, and he only turns around to watch Louis.

“When should I expect you back?”

Louis glances at the green clock radio on the mantle behind Alex. “Mid to late evening,” he answers. “It’s kind of a long work day today. But, um”—he pauses to look at Alex once his shoes are on, sighing—“We’ll continue this conversation then. I know you must have a lot of questions; forgive me for having to cut this short. This mustn’t be . . . ideal for you.”

Not entirely, no. But he’s been so caught off guard by this situation, and he’s exhausted, so, unlike when he first arrived, he isn’t sure what to feel.

Alex only manages to nod in reply. But as soon as Louis opens the door and makes his way out, the words, “Don’t you want to at least know my name?” are ripped from his throat.

“Alex Stiles.”

The words are called back to Alex as the door shuts closed behind Louis’s retreating figure.

The silence that immediately wraps around Alex and the room, attaching itself to the walls, the empty kettle on the burner, to the half drunk tea Louis had set on the small counter next to the stove, the air encompassing himself and brushing against his bare skin, stare at him with a heavy presence as he tries to understand. It only now registers that there’s no longer big band music circulating the flat. He looks down at his tea, and he swallows a small lump in the back of his throat before walking over and pouring his untouched tea down the drain, along with Louis’s, setting the cups on top of dirty plates.

Gripping the edge of the sink and leaning his weight against it, he inhales a deep breath, forcibly squeezing his eyes shut. He lifts his head and, turning around, moves his gaze slowly around the flat.

There are minor changes that his mind hadn’t bothered to wholly register earlier. The clock radio is different to the one he remembers having. His was old, granted, and he did need a newer one, as it _was_ going, and it was brown, whereas this one is an appealing soft green, slightly more compact, and it fits the aesthetic for a small home. Bed sheets a light viridian colour when he only ever owned white. Small trinkets spread across the mantle. A pretty emerald chair with a matching flower pattern on the seat cushion. Couple of small, simple picture frames scattered, hanging on the walls with drawn images in them. But he notices, that although that are many new things, nothing of Alex’s own has been moved or thrown out.

Just like Louis promised him.

Alex finds himself touching all these things, moving across the room with languid steps and looking at them with a close eye and a careful hand. He plays with a tiny dog trinket as he lowers himself onto the edge of the bed; then slowly curls his fingers over it, eyes falling to his lap then bed when he turns his head as his arm falls with it.

Easing himself back on the bed, he curls in on himself, and closes his eyes as he brings his closed fist to rest against his chest. Whiffs of a candy shop odor that filter through his lungs are all he gets before his eyes snap open, taking in his surroundings in a panic.

He attempts to close his eyes again, and again, but the static in the silence weighs too heavy in his ears, the air climbing into a six foot tall intruder, and they snap open on their accord.

He eventually just sits up and presses his hands to his face, and decides to wash his uniform.

 

 

 

Alex is startled when Louis enters the flat.

He looks up to see him taking off his boots. His tight grip loosens on his soaked uniform pressed against the washboard in the bucket full of dingy, soapy water sat on a counter in front of him. He glances to his left, out of the window, to see dark enclosed on them, and he lifts his hands out of the water to rest against the bucket edges. His fingers are so pruny, so shriveled up — he didn’t know he’d been scrubbing it this long.

“You’re early,” he greets, voice scratchy from disuse.

Louis’s shoulders lift in a feeble shrug as he saunters into the kitchen. “By twenty minutes. But Ada and Gladys practically shooed me out.”

Alex nods while keeping his eyes on the murky water.

Palpable silence envelopes them like rug over carpet.

“What are you doing?”

Alex’s whole upper body and hands jerk at the sudden closeness of the spoken question, and he looks at Louis with trembling fingers. Louis’s staring at him from a metre away with muted curiosity. Blinking, he swallows, and glances at the bucket.

“Trying to get oil off this thing,” he answers.

There’s no oil. He’s been washing this for the several hours that Louis’s been working, but he still doesn’t feel like it’s clean enough. He should’ve stopped once he reached the third hour, but he couldn’t make himself do it; it was compulsive.

Bringing himself closer, Louis takes a peek. Alex lifts his uniform further up the board for him to take a good look. “Empty the water, refill the bucket, and rinse it, then you’ll be good,” he tells Alex, eyes moving up to his face.

Alex does as he’s told in silence.

“Look,” continues Louis, voice taken on a completely different tone that has Alex slowing his movements, “I’m not leaving here without a fight. I’m more than willing to come to . . . an agreement of sorts, because I _refuse_ to go back to living on the street — especially now that I’ve managed to get off it and build something for myself. Even if it is just something as small as a pea.”

If Alex were another man, he’d let the blood swimming in his veins come to a boil and spew it at him, demanding and yelling that he had no right whatsoever to speak to Alex that way because this is _his_ home and _his name_ is on the lease, and he’d insult the streets Louis had come from before sending him running back to it.

But Alex isn’t his father, and he isn’t the men he’s seen blow their horn over the most mundane happenings and express it impulsively with violence.

He meets Louis’s eyes — eyes that are determined, resolute — with pinched and furrowed eyebrows, lips slightly parted.

“Why weren’t you scared?”

Louis blinks, caught off guard. “What?”

“You didn’t blink an eye when I came through that door.”

Long silence passes through them as Alex brings his uniform out of the water and wrings it out.

“Once you sleep and live on the streets,” Louis says, “you don’t get scared anymore.”

He inhales partly through his mouth and nose, letting the chill air settle in his lungs, eyes cast down. “So, is that your story, then? Poor orphan boy? Or just a poor boy? Because you don’t look young enough to be an orphan, and I’ve seen plenty of those.”

“Just a poor boy. Parents threw me out three years ago,” he explains. It’s without much feeling and as if he’s telling a casual story he’s resigned to knowing.

“Sorry to hear that,” says Alex quietly after a lull. Taking his heavy uniform, he walks over to the window and opens it, and goes about hanging it on the clothesline. He clears his throat as he shuts it and turns around to look at Louis properly. “Look . . . I’m not going to kick you out. I wouldn’t sleep at night if I did. I mean, there’s a war going on and it would be too dangerous for you — and other than you just trying to survive, there’s no reason for me to do that to you. So, you can stay; but on the agreement we split the rent and groceries; and you’ll be sleeping on the settee, so, I hope that’s not an issue for you.”

Louis’s mouth steadily curves into a smile that dances its way into his eyes and warms the skin around it, softening his entire face. “Once you know the life of sleeping on pavement and brick and praying through the night a rodent won’t disturb you, a settee is still a luxury; no issues whatsoever.”

A warm, welcoming tenderness of sorts trails its fingers along Alex’s ribcage and into his throat and fingertips at the presence of kind joy and captivating life on Louis’s face. He swallows it down. “Good.”

“Good,” Louis parrots back, then untying his candy striper apron and removing it. “So — soup and sandwiches for dinner?”

Alex merely nods.

 

 

 

Each morning he and Louis have breakfast together, beans on toast and eggs, and sometimes bacon, whilst Louis reads the newspaper and does his crossword. Alex just sits there and chews thoughtfully, sometimes reading the paper from a bad angle and staring at the pictures, other times staring out the window and listening to the news coming from their clock radio. Every evening they have dinner together, meals simple and inexpensive. Lunch between them only happened on the weekends and on the occasional week day when Louis worked later. But over the weeks, nighttime steadily became worse for Alex.

At first, through the nights, he had to wait a little bit to fall asleep instead of letting it take him immediately like it’s done all his life. Then it gradually shifted into him waking up periodically, finding nothing but silence and darkness and Louis’s soft, telltale snores coming from the sofa just mere metres away, and he’d lie awake in bed with wide eyes for several minutes before attempting to close his eyes again. But they’d just spring open again because of the heavy weighted silence in his ears that would turn into that six foot tall intruder.

Lately, now, he can’t seem to fall back asleep at all, no matter how hard he tries. He’s merely left with an average amount of three to five hours of rest and spends the rest sitting in the kitchen trying to solve the crossword puzzles Louis never finishes.

That’s what he’s doing this morning, a cup of tea by his side and the curtains of the kitchen window pulled back and window cracked just enough to let the rising sun and the crisp dawn air in; its caresses warm and forgiving against his bare arms and face as it heals him from the unfriendly chill due to the loss of comfort of his bed.

The weather of June has been remarkably warm, dry, and exceptionally sunny. But Alex likes it.

His head turns sharply and suddenly to the right to see Louis entering, short, soft hair messy in the back and strands wispy. He’s seen this every morning: watery bright blue eyes, face a shade or two paler, skin soft and tender and muted freckles, pouty lips.

Every morning it compels Alex’s gaze into lingering inappropriately.

He cuts his gaze away, clears his throat gently. “Morning.”

Louis’s voice is as tender as his sleepy skin, itching gently on a raspy note, warm as the breeze caressing Alex’s skin and the tea in his cup. As pretty as lace. “Good morning.”

He listens to Louis gathering his breakfast — a can of beans from the cabinet and some butter and bread to make toast — whilst pretending to be focused on figuring out the crossword puzzle in front of him. There are five words left, and he’s struggling.

He swears it’s not in his head that the further he goes the harder it becomes.

Louis takes Alex’s chair that sits opposite the window since Alex took his chair next to the wall, and starts eating. Alex keeps his eyes on the crossword, growing frustrated that he can’t find eighty-one down _or_ across.

He’s looked over this puzzle several times and it all looks the exact same to him, and he doesn’t understand it.

“You look angry,” Louis observes quietly, and Alex blinks, looking up to see him watching him carefully. “What’s the matter?”

“Can’t find eighty-one,” he explains, gruff.

“Le’me see.” Turning the paper around, Louis tilts his head as his eyes trail along it. He straightens himself almost immediately and turns the paper back around to Alex, placing his finger at the bottom of the puzzle and meeting Alex’s eye. “It’s right there. Sure you don’t need glasses, soldier?”

A soft huff escapes Alex. He shakes his head, trying to smooth his deeply furrowed eyebrows. They go right back to the way they were, though, giving him mild tension in the same area. “I’ve never needed glasses before,” he speaks quietly, “and I don’t think I’ll start needing them now. . . .”

He feels Louis’s eyes on him and he concentrates hard on the words to avoid shifting in his seat.

“Are you doing all right?”

Alex didn’t expect that. It’s strange — foreign — no. It’s been anomalous. He’s not used to living in close quarters with someone; no less a man. Living with someone before marriage is looked down upon, and living with a man is even _more_ frowned upon; to a point where it’s life or death, no questions asked. If someone found out they were living with one another, they’d get beaten up then thrown out in the street — best case scenario, of course. But that’s far from what Alex is concerned about. He’s just . . . not used to someone noticing anything about him, or asking him something as simple as Louis had.

He’s been trying to adjust to that in the last few weeks, and it’s been difficult.

“What’s a three letter word for a high hill?” he counters.

“Tor. You’re a fool if you don’t think I haven’t noticed how sleepless you’ve been.”

Alex pauses, pencil tip pressed against the paper. Licking his lips, he asks, “How?”

“I’m a light sleeper, and you’re very loud,” Louis says by way of explaining, and takes a bite of his buttered, bean covered toast. He chews and swallows before continuing. “I don’t know if you know that. You disturb my slumber quite often. And the bags under your eyes are a dead giveaway, too.”

He pencils in _Texas_ across for eighty-one. “I didn’t. I’m sorry, I’ll be quieter.”

“S’okay. So, what’s on that troubled mind of yours, soldier?”

That’s another, little thing. Louis tends to refer to him as _soldier_ with this subtle, humourous note in his voice more than he calls him by his name. As if they’re good friends.

“You act as if we’re mates,” Alex says, lifting his head.

Louis’s quick, thin right brow arched in a harmless challenge. “Well, we are, aren't we? We share this place. I see you every day. I know you’re grumpy in the morning — or maybe that’s just your latest schedule making you that way. You don’t like beans very much, nor bacon, for that matter. You suck at crosswords — eighty-nine across is Assyria —”—he sticks his thumb in between his lips to lick off some bean juice—“ _and_ I’m confident enough to say I think you prefer coffee to tea, which is _very_ controversial of you.”

Alex can’t help it, even if he tried — he chuckles. It’s soft, and it’s briefly lived, but it stretches his lips into an irresistible smile that smooths the pinched, tense skin between his eyebrows.

Louis’s own mouth curves into a satisfied smile, gaze lingering on Alex’s face in an indecipherable manner. “There we go,” murmurs he.

“What?”

“Thought I’d never see you smile. It’s a very handsome smile.”

That was bold to say to another man. It was dangerous. But Louis isn’t a fearful man. He’s a man of lively skin, soft, pigmented lips, very faint, iridescent purple bruising right under the inner corners of his eyes, and the sweetness of a sugar shop. He’s a man Alex didn’t think existed.

The compliment widens Alex’s smile an inch, and a cozy honey-like warmth colours his cheeks. It’s the first time in nearly a year he’s felt something under his skin that wasn’t dirt and grime. “Thank you,” he all but mouths inaudibly, his vocal chords’ life forgotten.

“ _And_ he has dimples,” Louis continues. “My, my. You’re full of surprises this morning.”

“You don’t have to wheedle my thoughts out of me, you know,” says Alex, and Louis lifts a shoulder in a nonchalant shrug, turning his lips down in a similar brief manner. “If you _must_ know, it’s — it’s nothing. I just haven’t been sleeping well lately, and there’s no particular reason why. It’s a normal occurance to everyone multiple times in their lives.”

Humming, Louis nods along as he chews. “Agreed; it’s normal. But it’s been a constant for a while. Sure you’re okay?”

The genuine, friendly concern that fills the crevices of his face and colours his voice stops Alex from making a sarcastic comment in return, inhaling deeply instead as he presses his lips together. “Fine.”

For the rest of breakfast, it’s silent, aside the occasional mumblings of Louis helping him finish the crossword. It’s the only thing they converse over. Then once Louis’s finished eating, he brushes any stray crumbs onto his plate and cleans it whilst Alex drinks the rest of his room temperature tea in calculated sips, gazing out the window at the colours of the risen sun reflecting against and over other buildings, clotheslines, automobiles, in hues of yellow and muted oranges casting shadows over the world.

He listens to Louis retrieve his uniform and make a ruckus in every which way he moves, before the bathroom door closes. Louis comes out few minutes later, but Alex doesn’t look at him when he hears him enter the kitchen.

“You know,” suddenly muses Louis, “I just want you to know you can talk to me. I consider you my friend. Just so you know.”

The muscles in Alex’s throat constrict as he takes a slow, quiet breath in. He looks away from the sun and to Louis. He’s in his work uniform, and Alex can’t deny he looks cute with the apron over his work shirt and trousers. “‘Course,” he replies plainly. “Have fun at work. Sneak me a sweet?”

Louis smiles. “I’ll see what I can do."

 

 

 

Alex’s eyes fly open.

The entire flat is dark and silent whilst his heart is beating wildly against his ribcage, colouring it black and blue, and skin sweating profusely under his arms and along his back and chest. He sits up, sheets and blanket pooling around his hips and stomach, and runs a hand up the side of the face and into his hair. His eyes are frantically searching the room as he pants, trying to find something, but all he’s met is the way everything was when he and Louis went to sleep and Louis lying on the settee peacefully under a blanket, sound asleep.

But he feels like he’s being lied to.

Removing the covers from himself, he stands from the bed and makes his way around the flat in slow, very precise but trembling footsteps, entirely too conscious of Louis and trying his damndest not to disturb him.

There’s nothing in the kitchen. Nothing on the other side of the entrance. Emptiness in the bathroom and in their living area. He doesn’t even remember what woke him up — if it was a dream, or a sound from the outside, or whatever. Pure black images rise to the surface of his memories when he tries to recall a dream, and it makes him believe it was some loud sound instead.

He retreats back to his bed and sits on the edge for several minutes, just looking, just feeling, just observing. His heart is beating irregularly still, and the skin of his limbs is sensitive to the touch because of the lingering apprehension glued to the edges of his conscious.

It’s the first time he’s been awakened in this kind of manner since his sleep has been acting up, and he’s not a fan.

Taking a deep breath to ease himself, he lies back down.

It takes him hours to find sleep again.

 

 

 

It keeps happening.

Over the next two weeks, Alex continuously wakes up in a sweat with no recollection of a dream and feeble aches in his shoulders and lower back. It doesn’t occur every night, but there is at least a one to two day absence before he wakes up in a sudden fright, paranoia eating at the nerves of him. And if he isn’t being awakened like that, he’s back to getting just a few hours of sleep.

He thinks Louis’s starting to notice something isn’t right, either.

Because of Alex’s increasingly disturbed character, he’s growing paranoid; every little unexpected sound makes Alex abruptly jerk, or startle, or tense up. Being out in public is probably the worst, because in grocery shops there’s loud sound, chatter, unpredictability, and it makes him look probably crazy. He remembers the questioning and concerned look on Louis’s face the first time it happened — a child dropping something hard to the floor nearby — and he jerked uncomfortably, eyes widening in apprehension as he automatically turned his head in the direction, rapidly beating heart tied heavily to his tongue. He looked back only to see it in Louis’s face and felt vulnerable, knowing he could possibly see all the cracks on the surface of his eyes and smile lines, the flare of his nostrils, the pinched skin between his eyebrows.

It was like it cast a wary light in Louis because whenever after something similar happened to Alex and he was right there, he just looked at him with something Alex couldn’t read. But he never says anything to him, nor does he ask Alex the same question he’d asked him the time he’d brought up his sleep the one and only time.

In a way, Alex feels this soft, calm gratitude for it because he knows he wouldn’t answer any of them.

 

 

 

Water — the heavy, crushing pressure of water encloses all of the parts of Alex’s body. The current is strong, and it jostles him around like a helpless paper doll, water hitting his face with its cold, merciless claws and dripping its poison into his lungs whenever it rises too high.

It’s dusk, that much he knows, but the colouring of the sea is black.

It reminds him of the oil that had spilled into the water after the ship he’d been on was targeted and destroyed. But this isn’t oil, and it’s not just a large area; it’s the entire sea that is pure and encompassing in this colour. He feels a lifevest wound tightly around him, but he can’t see it as he struggles to stay afloat. He knows someone is there with him, but he can’t see a face or make out a body and only feels the mere presence of a person he knows.

Then the black is overtaking him, swallowing him right into its greedy mouth and muting his vision and strength and cutting his sense of reality off. A constricting, panic stricken chokehold has his throat hostage, and no matter how hard he tries to swim upwards, to breathe life into his sick lungs, it’s just an infinite path and his arms and legs aren’t fast enough.

Startled, Alex sharply inhales as his eyes fly open abruptly.

“Alex,” Louis calls from above him, furrowed eyebrows deeply set with concern and worry. His right hand is touching Alex’s shoulder, fingers drifting from spot to spot, and Louis’s looking at him with eyes that match his furrow evenly.

Alex blinks continuously, a little dazed, as he pants heavily. “Sorry,” he apologises in a rough voice without really knowing what he’d done, and moves up in his bed to attempt disconnect the sweat gathered on his shirt at the bottom of his back and chest from his skin.

“You were thrashing,” Louis quietly tells him, eyes searching. “What were you dreaming about?”

Alex swallows. “I—” Words get stuck in the back of his throat, and he tries to swallow the warm, soft lump, but it’s resistant. All he sees is black water drowning his cries. “I . . . I don’t know. I—”

“It’s okay,” Louis soothes him when words continue to fail him. A moment of silence passes between them as they stare at one another, Alex still breathing heavily and Louis’s facial muscles not budging with care. “I’m gonna make some rosie for you, okay? Just — sit up and — I’ll be right back, okay?”

Nodding, he watches Louis stand and disappear into the kitchen.

Taking in deeps breaths, repeating it to regulate his lungs and steady his pulse, he hoists himself into an upright position against his pillow and slips his hand up under his white t-shirt to rub the perspiration in the centre of his chest and under his pecs; his neck and lower back; and tries to keep the images of his nightmare at bay as he waits with an empty mind.

Louis comes back with a cup, taking his previous spot next to Alex on the edge of the bed.

Alex whiffs at the tea he’s handed, head inclined slightly. He gently blows the dark liquid, creating ripple effects, and takes a small sip.

“Mm,” he hums, nostrils flaring and nose lightly pulling up with lips pressed together. He looks up at Louis. “What is this?”

“Lavender and vervain,” answers Louis, “with a few other, smaller herbs. It’s to calm your nervous system and relax you.”

He brings it to his mouth again for a longer gulp this time. He’s never been a lavender man, but it’s not too bad; the bit of sugar in it helps. Breathing in noisily, he lowers his cup while wrapping his hands around the heat seeping into his skin and meeting Louis’s soft gaze.

“I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“No,” Louis says, shaking his head. “Don’t apologise. I’m kind of glad I _am_ a light sleeper. You didn’t look like you were having fun. . . . Did you want to talk about it?”

The words are caught in the black goo in his throat again.

Even if he wanted to talk, he couldn’t — and Louis seems to understand that, a soft and fleeting smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he stands.

“Do you want me to leave a light on for you?”

Hesitant, Alex nods, and Louis does exactly that for him: it’s a small, brown bakelite night light he plugs into an outlet near him, placing it on the white dresser at the end of his bed and switching it on. It bounces off the wall to its right and the dresser, creating an illusive safety net that eases the worst of the dark surrounding him, whilst still keeping the rest of the flat shrouded in it. His eyes trail along after Louis, watching him lie back down on the settee and covering himself with a cotton blanket, glancing at Alex to give him a reassuring smile right before closing his eyes.

Alex listens to the silence until morning rises.

 

 

 

After slipping on his casual loafers and locking the flat behind him, Alex makes his way into the streets of London.

Louis had told him yesterday at dinner that he’d be working half the weekend — Saturday afternoon to early evening — which is something he normally doesn’t do. But he told him Gladys specifically asked him to come in and he couldn’t really refuse, so, he had accepted. He was just getting ready to make tea and lie on his bed to finish reading when he noticed Louis had forgotten his lunch. It was sitting on the counter, and he suspects Louis was in such a rush to get out the door he’d completely passed it by.

Alex shakes his head at the image running in his mind of Louis abruptly exiting the bathroom in a haste, almost tripping over himself as he put his work boots on, hopping over to the door. A smirk brushes his lips as he suppresses his laughter in the London crowd on the footway, because Louis’s never been late for anything in all the time he’s known him.

But that same time had gotten away from him, and Alex himself was far too immersed in his book to even mention it.

The tiny sweet shop comes into view, and he sees Louis through the window and the lettering advertisements. He’s behind the counter, leaning on it with his arms crossed and smiling and chatting with a customer — an older woman with her young son. The bell chimes from above when Alex enters the shop, and Louis’s eyes slide over to him, very briefly, and out of instinctual habit, but, just as quickly, he looks over again whilst still talking and his smile grows in recognition before he looks back at the people in front of him to bid them a goodbye.

Alex walks up to take their place as they leave, dropping the brown bag onto the counter.

Louis is still smiling at him. “Hey there, soldier,” he greets, soft playfulness edging the corners of his words. “What’cha got there?”

Alex glances down, helpless to not smile in return.

“Your lunch that you so _inconveniently_ forgot,” he replies. “I had to pause my me time to bring this to you so I could ensure that you wouldn’t starve to death.”

The skin by Louis’s eyes bunches further together. He pushes himself off the counter, taking the bag and setting it somewhere else, hidden by prying eyes. “I would’ve called eventually to have you come down,” he says. “But thank you.”

Alex’s drifted off to the right, languidly browsing all of the organised jars of sweets that line every surface and every shelf behind the counter. Picking up a glass jar with wrapped red sweets in it, he picks one out and examines it between his forefinger and thumb. Sweets were never a big thing for him growing up, despite how it’s every kid’s obsession; the pure happiness that came from being given pence on those special days from their mother and running down to the local shop to buy a few pieces and a bottle of Coke. It was something he experienced only once or twice himself because his father didn’t condone it.

“You can take that. Free of charge.”

His eyes cut to Louis. “Really?” he asks, eyebrows raised skeptically.

Louis nods. “Ada is in the back; she won’t know.”

Alex puts the jar back into its spot and and, after unwrapping it, sticks the cherry sweet into his mouth to suck on it. The flavour that runs down his throat feels like a saviour to his fairly empty stomach, and he likes it.

“So, this is where you work, huh?”

He gives the shop a cursory sweep of his gaze. He’s never been here despite living so close for so long.

“Where the magic happens,” Louis says dryly.

Alex softly chuckles as the bell above the door chimes loudly, signaling another person’s presence. He glances over his shoulder, out of curiosity, and a handsome woman — blonde hair in short, smooth waves, lips red, a matching flattering dress that silhouettes her thin figure — gives him a slightly mischievous smile as she makes her way to the counter to ask Louis a question.

He pays it no mind as he continues to browse, pretending to look as if he’s gonna buy whatever it is he sees he likes, rolling a trinket between his fingers. But then he feels someone come up beside him, and he sees her in his peripheral.

He knows what’s gonna come out of her mouth before she even speaks it.

“I’ve never seen a fella like you here before.” Her voice is soft but sultry, and the undertone to her words suggests something Alex is uninterested in. He feels like Louis’s eyes are on him, and it’s making this worse.

He doesn’t look at her. “I can imagine why.”

“Oh?” she says, sounding satisfied to his ears. Probably happy in thinking he’s playing along. “And how?”

He turns to her, giving her a polite, forced smile. “Because we’re strangers,” he states flatly.

After placing the trinket back, Alex turns around and walks to the door. He looks at Louis, who’s staring back with a calm, unreadable face, and his smile isn’t forced for him.

“See you later, Louis,” he calls to him.

Louis nods, returning the smile in half.

 

 

Alex is lying propped up in bed reading when Louis arrives home.

He has lit candles surrounding him, with only the kitchen light turned on in the whole flat. It got a little too warm a few hours ago, so, he opened up the window in the kitchen, letting the crisp outside air circulate inside. But now that the sun has set, the city has cooled down and Alex has grown cold. He sits up at the sound of the door opening, bookmarking his page when Louis wanders in with his apron off, looking unkempt with the collar of his shirt unevenly smoothed out and a few buttons at the top open to partially expose his chest.

Alex keeps his eyes on Louis’s face. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Louis replies, a soft, tired smile gracing his face. “What are you up to?”

“Reading,” he says, wiggling his book slightly before laying it beside him. He watches Louis take a seat on the green lounge chair a few feet away, folding his apron as he does so and fixing his collar. “How was the rest of work?”

“Uneventful. Although there was a cute pair of kids who came in and argued about which sweets were the better of the two, pear drops or sherbert lemons, so, that made for an entertaining debate to listen in on.”

Alex smiles. “I can only imagine.”

“Pear drops are _obviously_ the best, of course,” he says with a smirk.

Alex scoffs, looking at Louis like he’s grown two heads. “Are you serious? Everybody knows sherbert is. Have you been drinking?”

Louis laughs, its softness nestling itself in Alex’s hands and in between his collarbones, warming his skin into something sleepy and relaxed. He stands from the chair and makes his way to the bathroom, and Alex makes his own way to the kitchen once the door is shut. He pulls the leftovers out — the Sunday roast from yesterday that is good for another day — and starts putting it together from separate bowls into one pan in small portions after turning the oven on.

Louis comes to leans against the counter next to him after exiting the bathroom, dressed in pyjama pants and an old, plain white t-shirt, as he wraps the roasted halved potatoes with aluminium foil to protect it in the oven.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Louis starts as Alex puts the food in, “earlier, when you came by.”

Alex glances at him as he closes the oven door, standing up. “I’m listening.”

“Did you plan on getting a job? This isn’t me pressuring you, or anything of the sort, because I know it mustn’t be easy to adjust to life after war — no matter how long one’s been gone — and they still send you money in addition to what you’d saved during your time, but . . . I’m just curious, I suppose.”

“I . . . ,” Alex trails off, eyebrows pulling together, “I don’t know.”

He’s not thought about it in depth, but he has briefly entertained the idea since he’s mostly left with his thoughts.

He’s just not sure how it could work, and it makes him weirdly uncomfortable imagining himself doing the nine-to-five in a way that never existed before. A factory job would be fine, but he wonders how much more at risk he’d be at hurting himself because of his nightmares. They leave him sleep deprived, and jumpy, and he’s afraid that working at such a loud place could put himself in danger.

He doesn’t _want_ to do anything that could pertain to risking his life in any way.

Louis shrugs with crossed arms. “That’s okay.” He says it with absolute nonchalant acceptance.

“I don’t know,” Alex repeats, looking away. “I don’t think I should right now.”

Pushing himself off from the counter, Louis nods. “Okay. That’s fine. Was just wondering, anyway. Do you ever get bored, though? Being home almost all day by yourself?” He’s looking at him with a curious tilt to his head.

A chuckle that comes out as a soft puff is blown from between Alex’s lips.

“How could I be when doing crossword puzzles with you every morning fuels me for the rest of my day?” he jests dryly.

Louis laughs, and bumps his hip into Alex’s as he passes him to sit at the table.

The touch throws Alex off; the pressure clings and weighs down the spot on his clothes against his hip, pressing into his bare skin. He’s not used to being touched, and Louis has now directly touched him _twice_ in the past week. It’s a lot for his senses at once, but he doesn’t let it be shown externally as he focuses back on dinner.

They chat idly as their food finishes heating up, and Alex gathers two glasses of water for them and puts them on the table in their spots before pulling the roasts and potatoes out.

Dinner is a quiet but friendly affair.

 

 

 

The next day they go to their appointed grocers.

Last night after dinner, they’d made a list of different meals they’ve seen that had been published by the government for larger families, but they made modifications to fit their smaller, two-person meal plans. Alex never was the greatest at maths, so, he always lets Louis figure out the portions and measurements of everything they’d need because he does it in seconds.

It never fails to impress Alex just a little.

They get all the basic necessities at the grocers closest to them, and they’re now walking their way to the butcher’s as Alex listens to Louis chat away about small things or whatever crosses his mind, a considerable gap between their bodies. He talks a lot when they’re out, and it’s not a bothersome to Alex because he likes listening to whatever Louis has to say.

He may chime in with a comment or two himself, but mostly he prefers to listen. It’s become this routine every week the past two months whenever they’re out.

As they’re standing in the queue for the butcher’s, Louis says something about the rations book in his hand that triggers a part in Alex’s brain about something that never registered before.

“Wait,” he speaks up, and Louis pauses, looking up at him in question. Alex glances around them to make sure no one is paying attention to them before taking one step closer to Louis and lowering his voice to hopefully a volume only he can hear. “How did you, uh . . . do all this before I, um . . . ?”

Louis proceeds to stare at him before then dropping his gaze quickly, trailing his careful eyes up to something in the distance in front of them.

“I did it just like everyone does,” he whispers in reply, sparing Alex a brief glance as they move up in the line. “But I don’t have my birth certificate, so, I snooped ‘round until I’d found one . . . that happened to be yours. Used it, and no one was the wiser. I had no choice if I wanted to eat.”

Louis becomes sheepish at his admission, and avoids looking at Alex.

“Oh,” Alex breathes.

Louis glances at him. “I’m sorry.”

Alex shakes his head.

He doesn’t really care that Louis did that. All of the things Louis’s done has never been out of ill intentions, but out of self-preservation. And he’s undoubtedly the kindest man Alex’s ever met, and if he were being honest, if he had been in the same situation as Louis — homeless, alone, no resources, fear of the impending doom war brings — he’d have done it all, too.

“If you don’t have your certificate, then how did you get your job on the corner?”

“Ada never asked. . . . Neither did Gladys. Which surprised me, because I went in knowing I’d get rejected for that reason, but maybe it was because it’s _just_ a sweet shop and they’re too old, or maybe they took pity on me, or they flat out didn’t care. I don’t know. But I wasn’t going to use yours; that’s a thousand times more dangerous than using it to get rations, and I’m not stupid.”

Alex nods. “Right.”

Louis looks around, again, before meeting Alex’s gaze and adding, “This isn’t the same grocer I went to before you came back. It was a different one nearby; and I knew with you being back could maybe cause future issues, so, it was best not to risk that — no matter how small the chance. Good thing we live in the city, innit?”

It is. There are too many different faces to remember, and it’s easier to get away with that sort of thing here than it would be in a smaller town had they lived in one.

“What is the name of—”

A loud bang close by has Alex falling to the ground, dropping the grocery bags in his hands and disrupting his sentence, and covering his ears with his hands as he folds in on himself. It’s an instant reaction that paralyses his heart and has devastating apprehension constricting his throat and chest and numbing most parts of his body.

He feels a hand on him, and somebody speaking, but he can’t force himself to remove his own hands from his head nor focus his vision into a clear view as it keeps running away from him in a blur, disconnecting him from his surroundings.

Alex’s hands are removed as he hears Louis’s disembodied voice trying to soothe him.

“It’s okay — Alex, mate, it was just somebody dropping some wood, you’re all right.”

Louis keeps repeating similar things in a quiet voice until Alex manages to take enough deep breaths to steady himself. He looks up to see strangers looking at them, their faces unreadable and disapproving and judgemental and frightful, but Louis’s — when he looks to him — is full of nothing but concern and urgency as he picks up whatever ingredients had spilled from the bags he dropped. He looks at Alex and wraps a hand around Alex’s bicep to pull him up gently off his knees, murmuring to him that they need to go and everything’s going to be okay.

Alex follows Louis blindly the entire way home, on edge whilst waiting for the other shoe to drop and heavy breaths falling in puffs from his nostrils.

All he can hear in his head is the heavy, ringing sound of the abrupt drop.

Louis releases Alex and drops their groceries onto the kitchen counters once they’re safely in the comfort of their home. Without a word, Louis returns to him and guides him to the bed where he sits him down and takes the spot next to him at an angle facing him.

“Are you okay?” Louis asks softly, rubbing circles in the centre of Alex’s back.

Alex swallows, looking at him as he nods, though his hands shake still. He’s not sure, actually.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to apologise for, love.”

His chest caves in with warmth at the term of endearment, and he shakes his head, scoffing. “I dropped our food. I’m sorry, I hoped nothing’s damaged. It would _suck_ if we had to go a couple days without beans,” he adds in a dry tone.

Louis cracks a smile at that, chuckling. “All of it’s good. No busted cans. Don’t worry.”

Alex leans forward, digging his elbows into his knees as he runs his hands up his face and into his hair. “Good,” he breathes, settling his fingers against his cheek.

Silence encompasses them for an indefinite period, and Louis continues the comforting repetitive motions.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Louis eventually asks.

Alex shakes his head as he straightens himself. “I think it’s safe to say I’ve gone insane.”

“What makes you think that?”

He scoffs, turning his head to Louis with an incredulous expression. “I’ve become bloody paranoid,” he nearly exclaims, to which Louis hardly responds to, only looking at Alex with soft features. “I can’t sleep. I can barely go outside without thinking something’s out to get me. I mean, look what happened. I feel like I can’t handle even the smallest of things, like this, and it makes me want to go into hiding to protect myself because it fills me with fear. I’m so full of fear and teetering on the edge, and I don’t know how to deal with that. I feel like I’m only ever getting worse.”

Burying his face into his hands again, he shakes his head. He feels that he’s slowly losing his sense of reality, and he doesn’t want to end up in some institution where they treat people like that.

There aren’t any good stories that come from it.

“Was it like this back in civvy street?” comes Louis’s quiet voice.

Alex was an entirely different person back in civvy street. He wasn’t filled with a perpetual apprehension gnawing at the edges of his very bones day and night; his average nightmare wasn’t consumed with a black sea that pulls him in with poison ivy to his lungs; and he never felt like anything nor anyone was out to get him.

Before the war, he was fine in his solitude.

“No,” he mumbles, shaking his head.

He feels Louis’s hand move upwards towards the back of his neck and stop just between his shoulder blades. It’s settled there as a steady, warm weight.

“What did you see?” There’s an odd edge to Louis’s voice. “When you were . . . there . . .”

Taking his hands away from his face, Alex looks at him for several quiet moments. “A lot of dead bodies,” he states, monotonous. “A lot of men that slipped through _my_ fingers. Fire. Anguished turmoil. Merciless seas. . . . It was the definition of every man for himself. I didn’t know how literal it could be until I had to make sacrifices that cost the lives of others, whether on our side or not. _I_ almost died — twice.”

Louis is looking at him with a careful, considering face. “So, every time you hear loud noise, it brings you back to that.”

It brings him back to the gunfire, the explosions, the very life-awakening moments that showed him that lives could be taken away at any God given moment, for any miniscule reason, no matter how faithful a person was.

It brings him back to the all-consuming black sea.

Alex doesn’t say anything for a minute.

“I don’t trust anybody.”

“. . . Does that include me?” Louis’s eyes search him.

Alex’s lips part, but nothing slips out from between them. “No,” he murmurs after a pause, eyes finding Louis’s. “I—” He can’t even say the word. It sounds weird in his head, trying to say he trusts him. He’s used to being on his own and depending solely on himself, and he’s never had any sort of reason nor opportunity to say it to someone before. But he forces himself around it. “You assure me.”

Alex can say that. It doesn’t make him uncomfortable. He just hopes it conveys the original message.

A slow smile stretches Louis’s mouth, filling his cheeks and reaching into his eyes. His warm hand slides over Alex’s shoulder and cups the side of his face in the palm of it, thumb gently resting against his cheek. Alex inhales sharply at the contact, eyes falling to it, and he looks back up to Louis, back straightening even more.

Alex’s voice is a whisper. “You can’t touch me like that.”

His smile is gone, but he’s looking at Alex with something as warm and gentle as his touch, head tilted to the side slightly. “Because you don’t want me to,” he murmurs, “or because you don’t think it’s right?”

Alex shakes his head, lips parted as he blinks. “I — because it’s not . . .”

He trails off, not knowing how to finish. He doesn’t have anything to counter it.

“I don’t think you’re going insane,” Louis continues, eyes casting a brief glance to a lower part of Alex’s face. “I think your mind’s trying to cope with what happened, so, it’s coming out in the form of nightmares and anything else that’s making you feel like you’re not right in the head. But you’re not insane. You went through a lot.”

He releases a sigh through his nose as he stares at Louis.

“Why are you so nice to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re a bit of a recluse, but there is nothing you’ve done or shown me that warrants me being anything but to you.” Louis pauses. “Do you not think you deserve niceness?”

Alex licks his lips, cutting his eyes away. “I don’t know what I deserve,” he replies in a whisper.

Louis releases his hand from against Alex’s cheek. He moves it, tucking it underneath his face and gripping his jaw to turn Alex’s face towards him. But Alex keeps his eyes aimed to the ceiling, even as he lets Louis maneuver him. “Hey,” he calls softly, “look at me.”

Alex reluctantly looks at him. Briefly — gaze falling right to his lap.

Half of the reason he can’t look at Louis is because the little distance between them makes him squirm and fidget. The look in his eyes hasn’t changed from the softened and kind expression it’s been.

He brings a hand up to cover the one Louis’s touching him with, curling his fingers. “You can’t touch me like this,” he repeats, voice a touch firmer.

Louis’s grip loosens, but he doesn’t take it away. A moment of silence passes.

“Do you mind elaborating on the why?”

Alex can’t find his voice.

“Are you scared?” Louis presses.

“No.”

“Then look me in the eye.” It’s delayed by several seconds, but Alex does gather courage to look Louis in the eye. When he does, Louis’s hand falls away from his face; with it, his own hand, as well. “You’re funny,” Louis muses.

Alex scoffs. “How?” he demands.

Shrugging, Louis begins to smile. “It’s nothing superficial,” he explains, then stands to his feet. “I’ll go bring you some rosie.”

As he leaves, Alex finds himself taking in air easier, smoother; the first breath he takes is unsteady and wobbly, but it calms on the next exhale. He shakes his head at himself as he runs a hand through his short hair. Louis’s touch is all over his face; against his right cheek, under his chin, pressed to his jawlines; warm, heavy, distinct. Each touch is a life of its own, and it heats the apple of his cheeks with an inner, uncontrollable colour.

He almost wants to laugh at himself in shame; scoff at himself in shame. Ridicule himself. Not for feeling this particular way towards Louis, but for having a weak grip on his voice and his thoughts whenever it came _to_ him.

Louis comes back and hands him his tea. He sits down a spot farther from Alex this time, and Alex looks at the distance with a cold, numb distaste.

He looks up to find Louis staring at him, face unreadable, and, lowering his cup, he stands and walks over to the fireplace to place his tea on the mantle. His fingers linger against it, and he takes a breath and turns around to look at Louis.

He forces the words out of his mouth. “You make me nervous, that’s why.”

Louis blinks. “I make you nervous?”

Nodding, Alex continues. “Yes. Anytime you’re within reach, I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Eyes searching, Louis stands, and he steps towards him. He stops right in front of Alex, leaving somewhere around a foot of distance between their bodies. It’s making an erratic fieriness enclose Alex’s heart, holding his tongue and swallowing his voice.

“So, it’s not because you don’t think it’s right,” murmurs Louis.

His hand comes up to Alex’s face, but it doesn’t touch him. It, instead, hovers just right there. Alex glances at it, unsure of what to fucking do with his own hands that feel so misplaced, but he doesn’t move nor reject Louis’s hand.

“No,” he finds himself saying. “‘Course I don’t think it’s wrong. I can’t control how I’m feeling. Even if the rest of the world thinks it is and that I can.”

A smile stretches Louis’s mouth sweetly. “I had a feeling,” he vaguely comments.

Alex’s eyebrows furrow, confused.

“About what?”

“Do you think any man would just let me live with him?” Louis raises his eyebrows. “If he were kind, he’d help me _find_ a place, but he would never share one with me or another; nor would he smile and bashfully thank me when I compliment his smile and call it _handsome_ — then, yesterday, you completely dismissed that girl when she was trying to get with you.”

Alex can’t argue against the truth.

Lifting his hand, he curls his fingers around the back of Louis’s and carefully disrupts the short distance it has built between his skin. He presses Louis’s hand to his face and keeps his own atop it, and Louis’s facial muscles relax, head tilting as his eyes drop to Alex’s mouth and lingering before drawing them back up.

“Do you want to know why I’m so nice to you?” he asks Alex, who nods. “It’s because I like you. I think you’re very handsome, and kind.”

A rush of empowering affection courses through Alex’s chest, eliciting a smile from it. “Honest?”

Louis chuckles as he nods, smiling.

“I wouldn’t intentionally deceive you.”

Alex believes him. “So, you like me in spite of the fact I’m not in my right mind, and that I don’t feel like the same person I was in civvy street?”

Louis gives him a look.

“That’s not something that should affect my feelings for you,” he says. “It’s not a flaw; and it’s not your fault. Some things just change us.”

Alex searches his face, lingering on his mouth. “I like you, too,” he whispers, tightening the grip of his fingers on Louis’s hand.

Raising himself on his feet, Louis brings himself closer and looks Alex straight in the eye. He places his other hand on Alex’s face to hold it in both hands now and, dropping his eyes, he leans in and tenderly presses his lips to Alex’s. It’s warm and heavy in its comfort and care, woving its fingers tightly around the nerves of his centre; and Alex stands there with closed eyes, letting Louis kiss him and feeling every ounce of the sweetness that carves a large hole into his chest.

Louis separates them, and leans back to look at Alex.

But Alex pulls him back in, moving his mouth against his with velvety affection. He removes Louis’s hands from his face as he moves in closer to him and puts one hand on Louis’s lower back and the other around the back of his neck.

It seems to assuage Louis — has him humming low in his throat as he wraps his arms around Alex’s neck and strengthens the ardor of their kiss. It increases the beat of Alex’s heart.

As Louis slides his mouth away, he moves it to Alex’s ear, and whispers, “I want to try something, and I want to try it with you.”

Alex’s fingers instinctively tighten around Louis’s nape. “What is it?” he whispers back.

Removing his arms from Alex’s neck and stepping away, Louis takes one of his hands and pulls him over to the single size bed. He gestures for Alex to sit down and tells him to move backwards until he’s pressed against the wall. Alex does as he’s told, and watches as Louis crawls onto the bed and straddles his lap, sitting his arse on his thighs.

“I want,” he begins slowly with a sultry tone, leaning forward to talk low in Alex’s ears as he grips the sides of his neck, pressing his thumbs into Alex’s jaw, “for you to put your dick in me and make me cum until I can’t anymore — make love to me until I forget how to say my own name . . . ‘til I can’t feel my lower half.”

Pulling back, Louis smiles down at him and changes his voice to a casual one. “That sound good to you, honey?”

It sounds _more_ than okay to Alex.

He feels the damning anticipation growing in his palms and sprouting into flowers from his fingertips as he pulls Louis’s face close to his and murmurs his agreement before immediately kissing him.

This kiss isn’t smooth nor gentle like their one in the different life it happened in whilst standing in front of the fireplace — this kiss is mad with its vigor and fervor; it’s starving like a wolf on the edge of an abandoned road in the middle of nowhere during winter, snow coating every single inch of land in a blizzard’s haste, lining all of the branches that belong to thousands of trees taking up space in perfect symmetry.

Alex’s hands wander down Louis’s sides like the snowflakes coming down in this blizzard, coming to the front of his trousers where he starts to unbutton and unzip.

Louis’s mouth leaves his to kiss along his jawline, his wet lips brushing his skin in a seductive notion. “Have you ever done this with another man?” he asks.

“No,” Alex answers, moving his head to meet Louis’s eye and sliding his hands into Louis’s undone trousers to hold his hips. “But I know what to do. Is that okay?”

“As long as I can feel it tomorrow,” Louis breathes against his skin.

“Have you?”

“More or less. Less,” he admits. “Kissed one. Almost got this far.”

Alex hums, kissing him again as he tugs Louis’s trousers down to his thighs. Louis lifts each leg up accordingly to pull them out of his trousers, then pushing them to the floor. He sits back and undoes the zipper on Alex’s trousers, and Alex tosses his own to the floor, too. Louis allows himself to lean to the side, falling softly onto the mattress on his back, head meeting the pillow.

He crooks a finger at Alex, and Alex gets on his knees to crawl over him. Louis smiles up at him, skin bunching around his eyes. Alex brushes the back of his knuckle against his smooth, unblemished skin, eyes stuck to the few faint freckles dotting it.

“What are you thinking about?” Louis quietly asks.

Alex cuts his eyes to Louis’s. “How beautiful you are.”

He only stares at Alex for a few seconds before looking away, shaking his head as he chuckles — but he looks bashful as he does it. When he looks back, he shifts and lifts a leg to wrap it around Alex’s lower back, pressing him down so their crotches are against each other.

Louis’s definitely interested and very firm under his pants.

A soft groan sounds low in his throat at the direct contact, and he lowers himself onto his elbows to plank over Louis, kissing him.

He moves against him in a leisure rhythm that eventually has Louis squirming beneath him, draping the other leg over him as he turns their kisses desperate and messy and lifts himself up to take some sort of control of the pace Alex set.

However, Alex hums disapprovingly and pushes his body back into the mattress with his hand.

“No, no,” he murmurs against Louis’s lips, slightly puckering his to give him a lingering, teasing kiss. “Can’t just do what _you_ want when you explicitly tell me to . . . what was it, sweetheart? Make your spine tingle to the point of numbness? Make you cum until you can barely let any drip from the head? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

Louis gives him a considering look, but there are edges that are soft and ready to crumble. He bucks his hips in response to Alex, rubbing against him without breaking eye contact.

Alex drops his weight, effectively cutting any movement off.

He smiles sweetly at Louis as he crosses his arms and places his chin atop. His voice softly lilts. “What did I just say, baby?”

Louis relents with a lazy chuckle.

“All right, all right — was just testing you.”

“Turn over onto your stomach, sweetheart,” Alex instructs.

As he leans back onto his knees, having scooted backwards, he watches Louis and trails his gaze along his backside. He moves a hand under Louis’s shirt and pushes it up until it comes up between his shoulder blades, and bends down to kiss the expanse of his back, drifting his fingertips over indented lines with a touch as light as a feather.

Louis’s skin is incredibly smooth and warm — something of a warm August evening, sun setting into a pink and blue dusk — and he lays his head against it for just a brief moment, inhaling a soft breath.

Alex resumes kissing his way down Louis, soon meeting the curve of his bum; and he hooks his index fingers under the pants fabric, pulling it down to mouth at the doughy skin of his bum. Louis shifts slightly underneath him when he kisses along the crack and kneads him before pulling his cheeks far apart to look at his hole. Its pink is a healthy, watery one, with a little bit of fuzz on the skin near it. He kisses it softly, earning a twitch from Louis, and repeats it several times until he’s sucking on it and licking into it, kneading his arse.

Louis is moving beneath him against the mattress, and he groans particularly loud when Alex nibbles roughly. Alex pauses his rimming to ease the ache in his jaw and tongue and to breathe a little steadier, kissing the tailbone area, then diving back in.

He’s rougher, ardent in his goal to make Louis cum.

Louis pushes back onto his tongue, sticking his bum farther into the air as he rocks back and forth with a rhythm of his own, a string of soft moans spilling from between his lips as Alex is sure his cock drags across the sheets.

He becomes progressively louder with his raspy whines and moans as Alex licks into him persistently, and Alex feels himself dripping precum into his pants because of both Louis’s sounds and eating him out.

“ _Alex_ , please,” Louis cries — it’s watery, and pained, and utterly desperate, begging to be let over the edge. “ _Please_ — please.”

Then, when Alex’s pushing his tongue in as deep as he can with a controlled movement and licks it out, Louis goes abruptly silent and tenses, hole clenching around nothing. He kisses and nibbles on Louis’s hole as Louis cums into the mattress, coaxing him through it, and moves a hand to his lower back to rub soothing circles, a self-satisfaction seizing his chest and reaching his eyes as a smile erupts across his face.

He tries taming it as he helps Louis turn onto his back, pressing his lips together, sucking in his cheeks, but he doesn’t think it works too well by the sluggish eye roll Louis gives him.

“What?” he laughs.

“You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Louis says, smiling.

Alex nods unashamedly. “Yes. I am."

There’s cum smeared all over Louis’s stomach. He starts to play with it, smearing it more with his index, then gathers as much of it as he can on his first two fingers and leans down to meet Louis’s curious gaze. “Open up, sweetheart,” he murmurs in a rough voice, nudging Louis’s lips apart.

Louis parts his lips without a complaint, allowing Alex to stick his cum-covered fingers in, and he closes his mouth to suck on them without Alex having to prompt him.

Alex’s dick twitches.

He lets Louis suck on his fingers for a few minutes, then pulls them out to kiss him. Louis tastes like cum and a little bit like the tea he had earlier, but it’s good.

He instructs for Louis to roll onto his stomach again, and Louis makes a small scene out of it by groaning quietly, and Alex just lightly taps his bum in response before crawling back face to face with said rear. He grips both cheeks in his hands and spreads them apart again — as far without possibly hurting Louis — and releases to knead him.

He hears a small moan come from Louis.

Alex finds his way up towards Louis once again, this time lying on top of him, his dick laying _right_ atop his crack, and puts his mouth to his ear, whispering, “You tasted so good, sweetheart. And you’re so beautiful when you’re on the edge, begging for release. I could listen to you moan all through the night, saying my name over and over like a prayer.”

He starts rutting lazily against Louis, sliding his dick up and down, as he speaks, causing Louis to whimper. “Baby, can you say my name? Say it like you mean it — again and again. Please.”

“Alex,” Louis sighs in pleasure. It sounds so dirty to his ears because of the high, sultry breathlessness that drips in gold. “Alex. _Alex_.”

Alex’s hips pick up speed as Louis continues to chant his name in the same high pleading voice with a fist curled tightly around the sheets, and he buries his face in the back of his neck with a moan as more precum leaks from his tip. God, he’s so fucking hard, he wants to take Louis right here like this.

“Baby,” he pants softly, “is there anything I can use as a lubricant—?”

Louis nods. “Under the bed, there’s something. You’ll know what it is.”

Alex moves off of him and onto the edge to blindly feel around. His fingers eventually brush something hard and cold, and he brings it up to his eye to see what Louis meant. “So, is this what you used, sweetheart?” he asks as he unscrews the lid and drags two fingers across the smooth texture and coats them well down past the knuckle. “Did you use this on yourself? Use your own fingers and imagine them as another’s? Or did you get off on only yourself?”

Alex sets the small container aside and spreads Louis apart, sliding his wet index finger over his hole to get a rise out of Louis, who does exactly what he wanted: shift in needy anticipation and moan.

“Myself,” he answers a second late.

Alex pushes a finger in, watching the material of the bedsheet Louis’s lying under become further bunched in Louis’s grip at the contact. He smiles to himself as he begins to slowly work his finger inside of him and listens to the very soft sounds Louis’s making, his breathing growing erratic.

“Yourself?” Alex questions with a quirked eyebrow. “You get off on yourself? You get on your knees, spread your legs and feel yourself up? Do you like to watch yourself in a mirror, so, you can see the way you look from behind? I wouldn't blame you; you’re so pretty. If I were you, I’d do it every time. I’d _tease_ and draw it out and send a prayer to God that I’d be on the constant brink of cumming but refuse to let myself so that I could feel desperate and _cry_ and _beg_ someone who isn’t here to have me let go.”

He kisses various spots of Louis’s back as he lets his middle finger enter and further open Louis, and softly speaks into his back as he listens to him whine high in his throat and match the movements of Alex’s fingers by rutting against the bed again. “Is that what you want, sweetheart? Or is that what you do? Because I’d love nothing more than to have you on edge for hours and not let you cum.”

“Alex, _please_ ,” Louis whimpers.

He sounds like he _could_ cry, if Alex forced him to, but he merely smiles into Louis’s tailbone and places a last kiss there before removing his fingers completely. “Okay, baby, hold on.”

He smears his hard dick in whatever it is in the container and moves over Louis to line himself up. Alex’s head is so pink, and wet from the precum dribbling from his slit, and his balls and lower half of his straining dick are even an angrier shade of the colour.

He’ll probably cum within minutes, once he’s entered Louis and has set a rhythm, but he’s gonna try to hold off until he makes Louis cum again.

Louis gasps when he gets the head in, and instinctively arches his arse into it.

Alex leans down slowly, smoothly and cautiously pushing his dick in little by little, until he’s lying down and covering Louis’s entire backside. “Do you feel all right, baby?” he murmurs right in Louis’s ear, trailing his dirty hands down his arms and intertwining their fingers together and bringing them right to the sides of Louis’s head.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Louis exhales brokenly and sharply beneath him, “I’m fine, just — _please_ , move. Please.”

Alex is buried so deep within Louis he feels all of his walls and the tightness putting constant pressure on his dick, and the way Louis’s hole keeps trying to flutter and clench around him is making it worse to keep himself from _his own_ brink.

Lifting his hips slowly upwards, he brings them down roughly, startling a loud moan out of Louis. “Oh, fuck, oh, my _god_.”

Alex kisses Louis’s ear. “You want it like that, sweetheart? Or do you want me gentle? I can do both for you, and more, if you ask.”

Louis whines. “Gentle first and then work your way to fast and rough.”

He stretches his neck to kiss Louis’s cheek and whisper his okay.

Alex’s hips move slow and gentle for a long time, making each drag agonising and long as he sets a careful pace that he won’t lose easily, fucking into Louis with hips that meet the skin of his bum each time and makes it move a little against the impact.

Louis’s so vocal, but his sounds are quiet, just little whimpers and mutterings of curses and pleas with Alex’s name attached to the end of them that make him sound beautifully pathetic. It drives him nearly _mad_ to hear Louis like this, but as soon as he finds a spot that instantly makes Louis gasp and arch his back best he can as Alex lies on top of him, loudly pleaing with Alex, he starts snapping his hips roughly into him.

Louis throws his head back, narrowly missing Alex’s face. “ _Oh, my God_ ,” he cries. “Please, please _please_. God, please — rougher, faster, Alex, _please_.”

Alex does as he’s told, eliciting further gasps and moans from Louis, and though he’s sweet and loves hearing him be loud, he removes his right hand from Louis’s and covers his mouth with it. “Baby,” he pants into his ear, voice octaves lower than normally, “someone could hear you. Our _neighbours_ could hear you. You don’t want that, do you?”

“Let them,” Louis says once Alex’s moved his hand away. “ _Let_ them hear how good you’re giving it to me. I’m sure they pro—probably don’t experience it like this — wishing their husbands could make them feel as good as you’re making me feel. _God_.”

Alex moans deep in his throat and starts kissing Louis’s nape as his hips increase their speed.

On a very rough, satisfying thrust that has Louis crying out the loudest he has ever, he abruptly falls silent, body tensing and hole clenching painfully around Alex’s dick that drags a loud moan out of Alex himself and makes him thrust that much harder into Louis. The urgency he feels pulling tightly around every muscle in his body increases immensely and without warning Alex’s jaw drops as it releases, cumming long and deep inside of Louis as Louis feebly moans underneath him.

Alex rides it out for several moments before relaxing himself entirely, breathing heavily as he lies on top of Louis.

It’s silent as they both try to catch their breaths.

“Give me another minute,” Alex starts quietly, panting slightly, “and I’ll put out.”

“By all means,” Louis rasps, “take your time. No complaints from me.”

Alex smiles, and kisses his neck.

“Was that good enough for you?”

Louis scoffs. “I was seventy-two percent ready to cry; if that wasn’t good, then I’d _love_ to see your definition of it.”

Alex laughs, hums as he moves Louis’s head further to the side to nuzzle his head into his neck. “I still want to pull a third orgasm out of you,” he whispers, biting on a bit of Louis’s skin and sucking it into his mouth. “Think you got another one to give, sweetheart?”

“Give me a little time, then I can.”

He hums again. “Okay,” he simply says before pulling out and moving down Louis’s body.

Alex spreads Louis’s cheeks apart, and gently pushes his index finger into his hole to play with the cum pooled inside. Louis gives a very faint, pained groan, probably because he’s so sensitive, but doesn’t make any move to tell Alex to stop, so, he continues, drags some of the cum out and smearing it all on the outside and up to Louis’s soft cheeks. He takes those bits into his mouth and sucks reddening bruises into Louis’s arse.

He hears Louis chuckle as he pushes his arse into Alex’s face playfully. “Knock it off before you can’t touch anything else.”

He doesn’t sound serious whatsoever, but Alex pulls off, anyway, and places a tender kiss to the same area. “All right, darling.”

A pause comes from Louis.

“Okay, you can continue.”

Alex laughs and does.

 

 

It’s a really good night. He still ends up waking from a nightmare that Louis tries to calm him down from in the middle of the night, but the good part is that he finds it easier to fall back into a slumber with Louis wrapped in his arms, head resting against Alex’s chest and a leg draped over the top of his, even if it still takes a couple of hours.

He hopes that with time that he can work on minimizing those hours, and maybe eventually overcoming the nightmares that haunt his mind in the night.

It may take a long time, but he’ll get there — especially now that he has Louis in all the ways he can have him; who’s so willing to help him and be there for him and assure him he’s not going insane; who’ll tell him it’ll be okay when he doesn’t feel like it will.

But he believes Louis, and that could maybe be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://tllthesundies.tumblr.com) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/tiIthesundies) | [post](https://alexlouisficexchange.tumblr.com/post/170663758748/poison-wine-by-tilthesundies-words15509-he)


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